After a record-breaking Memorial Day weekend, the summer box office is forecast to stay hot.
Disney’s live-action remake of “Lilo & Stitch” and “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning” brought audiences to movie theaters all weekend, fueling record-breaking Memorial Day weekend domestic box office earnings of more than $326 million, per Reuters.
Families showed up for the “Lilo & Stitch” remake, earning more than $145 million in domestic ticket sales during its weekend debut, per Comscore. “Lilo & Stitch” is now one of Disney’s highest-earning live-action remake debuts, behind only 2019’s “The Lion King” ($191 million) and 2017’s “Beauty and the Beast” ($174 million).
As forecasted, “Lilo & Stitch” outperformed “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning,” which took home $63 million at the domestic box office over the weekend, making it the largest debut in the “Mission: Impossible” franchise, per Comscore.
“A record opening on the eighth iteration is remarkable. It speaks to the longevity of the franchise,” Paramount’s distribution chief Chris Aronson said, per Variety.
He added, “The spectacle of what Tom and (director Christopher McQuarrie) put on screen is one-of-a-kind in today’s marketplace.”
Memorial Day weekend typically serves as an indicator for summer box office trends — which are currently heating up and bound to rake in roughly $4.2 billion in ticket sales, according to Deadline.
“The summer movie season of ’25 is going to be epic, and not just in terms of the box office revenue which will likely wind up at more than $4 billion in the domestic market but also for what this incredible lineup of films will represent to audiences, movie theaters, movie studios,” senior Comscore analyst Paul Dergarabedian told Deadline.
He added, “This summer’s movie season, coming in the wake of the Covid pandemic in 2020 and then the strikes and resultant chaos that disrupted the release calendar in the first half of ’24 and muted the box office, will generate both massive buzz and impressive box office revenue with a lineup of films that are set for release over the next 16 weeks is one of the most incredible ever on offer on the big screen.”
Several more highly-anticipated remakes and sequels — which thrive at the box office — are slated to release in the coming summer months, including “How To Train Your Dragon,” “Jurassic World: Rebirth,” “Superman,” “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” and “Freakier Friday.”
If the box office meets expectations, it could beat out the explosive success of summer 2023’s “Barbie” and Oppenheimer," which boosted summer earnings to $4.03 billion, Variety reported at the time.
Last year’s Memorial Day kicked off summer with lousy box office sales — followed by slow ticket sales up until “Wicked” and “Gladiator II” hit theaters leading into Thanksgiving.
“Every film on the release calendar for the rest of the summer is going to benefit from the momentum created over this monumental record-breaking Memorial Day weekend in theaters,” Dergarabedian told Variety.
“Last year’s abysmal Memorial frame took the wind out of the sails of the industry that took many weeks to counteract, and this year we don’t have that problem.”